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Russia
The Russian Federation, known as Russia, is a semi-presidential republic extending over much of northern Europe and northern Asia. It comprises 83 federal subjects, and is the largest country in the world in terms of geographical borders. After a period of rule under various smaller kingdoms, the 18th Century saw the rise of the unified Russian Empire as the center of a substantial land-empire under the absolute rule of the tsar. However, after its disastrous defeat in World War I, Russia fell into revolution in 1917, and then a civil war that raged into the 1920s that saw the fall of the monarchy and the rise of a communist state. In short order Russia became the leading constituent of the Soviet Union, which emerged from World War II as one of two global superpowers, and was locked in a Cold War with the United States and its allies. The Soviet Union fell in 1991. Russia became the center of a (more or less) democratic federation, and re-emerged as a major economic power on the world stage throughout the beginning of the 21st Century. Russia in Atlantis In the mid 18th century, Russia was on the losing side of the global conflict which included fighting in Atlantis. In the mid 19th century, the Russian government perpetrated massacres of the Jews.Liberating Atlantis, p. 213. Russian propaganda demonized the Jews by accusing them of practicing ritual murder. British detective Athelstan Helms looked into this matter and found all such assertions to be completely baseless.See e.g.: Atlantis and Other Places, pg. 395, HC. Literary comment Pogroms are hinted to be common in Russia by 1852. In OTL, there were hardly any during that time period. This is probably a butterfly effect of this timeline. Russia in Crosstime Traffic In the home timeline, Russia was more or less functional, but was rather out of step with the rest of the world. In 2097, it released a tailored virus into Chechnya, but didn't properly immunize enough people in the bordering areas to keep it from spreading.The Disunited States of America, pg. 278. It also wasn't above arresting people for political crimes, but that wasn't something it did much.The Gladiator, pg. 194 Crosstime Traffic was aware of an alternate in which the Spanish Armada conquered England in 1588 and Spain created an empire that bordered Russia. Footage taken in this alternate was shown to Jeremy Solters and his fellow students in US history class. Russia in Curious Notions In the alternate designated as 3477 by Crosstime Traffic, Russia and its allies Britain and France were defeated by Germany in the brief war of 1914. Russia was the key factor, as it was slow to mobilize, allowing the Schlieffen Plan to work.Curious Notions, pg 18. Russia lost its territory in Poland, Finland, Courland, and the Ukraine, which were set up as nominally independent nations in the German sphere of influence. France and Britain went to war with Germany in the late 1930s, but were again defeated, which cleared the way for Germany to take full control of Europe. Russia, which had been in a perpetual state of civil war since 1914, did not participate in that war.Ibid, pg. 19 In the late 21st Century, Siberia, now fully under German control, was used by the Feldgendarmerie for one of their harsh "penal colonies." Russia in The Disunited States of America The Russian Empire was one of the world's great powers.The Disunited States of America, pg. 146. Nonetheless, it was sufficiently "backward" to still use land lines at the end of the 21st century. In 2096, Russia still owned Alaska.Ibid., 254. In the 1940s, Russia was damaged in the War of the Three Emperors.Ibid., p. 242. Russia in Gunpowder Empire Agents of Crosstime Traffic who secretly explored the Agrippan Rome alternate found that the western parts of what corresponded to Russia were here part of Lietuva, with the Slavic population considerably Lithunaised in language, culture and religion. Further east, most of the vast territory corresponding to the rest of Russia was a poor land belonging to no empire.Gunpowder Empire, pg 49. Neither Lietuva nor Persia or China - all of which bordered on this region - considered it worth the trouble of conquering and garrisoning. See also Soviet Union (Crosstime Traffic) for Russia in The Gladiator and The Valley-Westside War. Russia in A Different Flesh Russia fought a terrifying war against Prussia in the 20th century.A Different Flesh, p. 288. Russia in "Drang von Osten" In the early 2040s, Russia had been overrun and occupied by China. A German-led coalition attempted to drive the Chinese out, but failed bloodily. Russia in The Guns of the South Russia was the only major power in North America that had stayed neutral during the Second American Revolution and the ensuing conflicts. However, after the US Army defeated the British in their North American dominions, and captured Vancouver and Winnipeg, the Russian government became alarmed. Realizing that they would never be able to defend their Alaska territory if it was invaded, they chose instead to sell it to the US. One of the supplies provided to the Confederate Army by the Rivington Men bore the Russian writing CCCP. This translated as "the SSSR," which was incomprehensible to all Confederates. Russia had freed its serfs while the Second American Revolution was ongoing. This fact was one of the elements contributing to Robert E. Lee's growing distaste for the institution of slavery after the war's end. Russia in The House of Daniel After the Russians rose up and killed their Czar, many outsiders wondered if vampires were running the show, as the rhetoric used in Russia was similar to the standard vampire line. They also used a red flag, which many saw as more proof of vampire rule.The House of Daniel., loc. 1652. Russia in Joe Steele People from the Russian Empire, before it became the Soviet Union, had a considerable effect on American politics during the 20th century, as many of America's most powerful men were either children of immigrants from the defunct Empire, or immigrants themselves. These included Joe Steele, Vince Scriabin, Stas Mikoian, and Andy Wyszynski. Russia in "Liberating Alaska" Alaska was the Russian Empire's sole North American territory until the outbreak of the Russian Civil War. Early in the 20th century, a Russian trapper hunting beaver found gold in the region around the minor town of Siknazuak, which almost immediately boomed into a real city as Russians, Canadians and Americans flooded the area, digging for easy gold. However, once the easy gold was extracted, the boom became a bust, and large chunks of the population returned to their respective homes. Gold could still be had, but it required a great deal of work. During period between 1918 and 1920, the U.S., among other countries, invaded Siberia to combat the Red Army in during the Russian Civil War. While the Reds won and established the Soviet Union, their leader, Vladimir Lenin, was forced to cede a number of Russian territories. As the U.S. Marines withdrew from Siberia, they were able to seize Alaska, and Lenin did not contest it.Asimov's Science Fiction, July/August, 2018. In 1929, Lenin's successor, Joseph Stalin, still angered by the loss of the whole of Alaska to the U.S., initiated an surreptitious invasion of Siknazuak, bu the U.S. liberated the town at the end of June, 1929.Ibid. Russia in "The More it Changes" By the 1770s, the Sabbateans had a toe-hold in Russia. Russia in "Occupation Duty" Novgorod was a vast land in northern Eurasia. Among their exports were well made assault rifles popular with terrorists around the world. Moabites used these Novgorodian rifles in their ongoing insurrection against their Philistinian occupiers.See e.g.: Atlantis and Other Places, pg. 248, HC. Literary comment The reference to "Novgorodian rifles" and their description is an allusion to the AK-47. Russia in "Slue-Foot Sue and the Witch in the Woods" Due to an accident with an angry horse and a bouncing bustle, the American adventuress Slue-foot Sue found herself in Russia, where she managed to defy the powerful witch Baba Yaga. Russia in Southern Victory During the War of Secession, Russia was the only major tricolor continued being the official Flag of Russia.]]European power to favor the United States. After the war, the United States attempted to buy Alaska from Russia, but the price of $7 million was too high for the U.S.'s depressed economy. In later times, Russia became a member of the Quadruple Entente, which made it an ally of the Confederate States, and an enemy of the US - this, however, was a side-effect of Russian policies mainly dictated by power relations in Europe. Tsar Nicholas II entered the Great War by pledging to protect Serbia when that country refused Austria-Hungary's ultimata relating to the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand. However, Russia proved poorly prepared for such a war militarily. Although the country did not lack for manpower, it did lack for adequate supplies. Consequently, when Russia clashed with Germany, Russian troops suffered horrendous casualties. The lack of support for the war in Russia combined with German gains lead to a revolution and the country's withdrawal from the War in 1917. Germany carved the Kingdoms of Poland and Ukraine out of former Russian territory. Russia's withdrawal presaged the eventual collapse of the Entente war effort. For nearly a decade, Russia was embroiled in a bitter civil war between socialists and Tsarists. Eventually, the Tsarists won in 1926, defeating the last socialist holdouts at Tsaritsyn, killing the general known as "The Man of Steel" and his second-in-command, "The Hammer". Tsar Nicholas II died in the early 1930s and was succeeded by his brother Mikhail II. Mikhail's revanchism was a good match for his Entente allies, as Britain slid towards absolutism, France itself restored its monarchy under King Charles XI, and in the Confederate States Jake Featherston was elected president. Mikhail rejoined the Entente upon consolidating his own power, which included renewed persecution of the Jews. When German Kaiser Wilhelm II died in 1941, Russia joined the Entente in pressing Germany for the return of their lost territory. When the new Kaiser, Wilhelm III, refused, Russia followed its allies into the Second Great War. Despite some initial gains in Poland and Ukraine, where the populations were split in support of Germany and Russia, the Germans defeated Russia in the Ukraine. Russian factories and railroads in Petrograd, Minsk, and Smolensk were heavily damaged by German bombers. The remaining Reds from the Russian Civil war adopted the Mormon people bombing tactic against the Tsar's government by 1943. Early in 1944, Germany warned Russia to withdraw from the war with a vague but hyperbolic threat of destruction. When Russia did not withdraw, Germany destroyed Petrograd, the national capital, with the first superbomb used in war. The Tsar's government survived, and retreated to Moscow. While initially defiant, Russia's ability to prosecute the war was badly hampered by the loss of Petrograd. It sued for peace shortly after Petrograd was destroyed. Almost immediately, Russia's one time ally Japan began making territorial demands in Siberia. Throughout the war, the Russians refrained from opening a war front on the border of Alaska with US-occupied Canada. Such an offensive, if launched in conjunction with the initial Confederate offensive deep into US territory in 1941, would have created a difficult situation for the Americans. However, potential territorial gains in the frozen north of Canada in no way tempted the Russians into diverting forces from their main enemy, Germany. By the same token, in later parts of the war the US did not feel that a potential conquest of Alaska would justify diverting forces from their front with the Confederacy. In effect, Russia and the US tacitly agreed to treat the Second Great War as two separate wars - an Eurasian one and a North American one - and not to link them up. It was only after the end of the Second Great War when Russia undertook its own superbomb project that the US started to seriously regard Russia as a potential threat. Germany was, naturally, far more frightened by this course of events, but the US also felt uncomfortable with the prospect of the Russians gaining such weapons. One reason the U.S. decided to liquidate Confederate superbomb expert Henderson V. FitzBelmont was the apprehension that the Russians would get their hands on him and his bomb-making knowledge. Russia in Supervolcano Some six years after the eruption of the Yellowstone Supervolcano, Russia, suffering from harsh winters and a complete failure of agriculture, invaded both Ukraine and Kazakhstan, which were somewhat better off. The Russians used the fact that both countries had historically been under Russian rule as a thin casus belli.Things Fall Apart, pg. 160. Both countries reached out to NATO, but the response was limited at best. The U.S. Secretary of State expressed disapproval of the invasion. Russia effectively told the USA that the invasion was none of its business.Ibid., pg. 163. The invasion did not go as hoped. In addition to the cost on the ground, Kazakh special forces were able to infiltrate Russia and blow-up two nuclear power plants. While the explosions did not cause a meltdown on the level of Chernobyl, they did raise the background radiation.Ibid., pg. 176. Russia was very vague about its agricultural production numbers, and began buying grain on the world market, paying for it with oil.Ibid., pg. 281. Within time, the war became bogged down.Ibid., pg. 345. The war and the terrible weather also benefited Chechen rebels, who stepped up their guerrilla war.Ibid., pg. 281. Russia in The Two Georges The Russian Empire, along with the British Empire and the Franco-Spanish Holy Alliance, were the three major powers in the mid-1990s. The Russian Empire bordered on the German States and the Austrian Empire to the east and spread across Eastern Europe and Asia north of the Ottoman Empire, India and China to the Pacific Ocean (excluding the Empire of Japan) and included Alaska on the North American continent, bordering the North American Union provinces of Banksia and Vancouver.Map The Two Georges, frontispiece. During the 19th Century, the British Empire offered to buy Alaska from Russia but the Tsar refused; Colonel Thomas Bushell of the Royal American Mounted Police and others would later comment that "No" was something Russians were very good at. In the 1990s, Russia sought to dominate the Germanies. The Holy Alliance attempted around the same time to pin them with the crime of conspiring with the Sons of Liberty against the British Empire, doing so by supplying the Sons of Liberty with Russian Mosin-Nagant bolt-action rifles. The Tsar's feared secret police were called the Okhrana. Russia in "Uncle Alf" Russia made brief territorial gains against Germany in the Great War of 1914, but once Germany had defeated France, Russia was quickly beaten. In 1916, Kaiser Wilhelm II helped his cousin and former enemy Tsar Nicholas II put down a communist revolution.Atlantis and Other Places, pg. 343. In 1929, Feldwebel Adolf Hitler of the German Feldgendarmerie told his niece Geli Raubal that the Tsar "was and is a woolly headed fool of a Russian" for not hanging more revolutionaries in the prior rebellion of 1905.Ibid., pg. 344. Russia in "Vilcabamba" Some time after the Krolp arrived and subjugated Earth, Russia joined China and the United States in a massively organized, but futile, uprising. Russia in "Zigeuner" The Russian Empire fought several enemies on the Eastern Front of World War I, including Germany. Years later as he rose to power in Germany, Adolf Hitler claimed that while his division was fighting the Russians, they also had to contend with the Zigeuner people. Hitler claimed that the Zigeuner stole essential items from the Germans, such as horses, boots and telegraph wire, helping to cause unnecessary German casualties.Asimov's Science Fiction, September/October, 2017, Vol. 41 Nos. 9 & 10, pg. 94-95. At the same time, Hitler also saw how badly the Russians treated the Jews they found in the Austro-Hungarian provinces they overran. Hitler already hated the Russians, and their anti-Semitism left him sympathetic to the Jews.Ibid., pg. 100. Upon his ascendancy, Hitler declared Zigeuner to be Untermenschen, along with Bolsheviks and homosexuals, and actively sought to eliminate these groups from Europe.Ibid., pg. 99. See also * The Soviet Union, for which Russia served as the nucleus. In most alternate history works with PODs after 1917, Russia is the greater part of the USSR as it was in OTL. The USSR still exists after 1991 in any timelines, and most pre-1991 works "set in the future". As was common (if only half correct) in OTL, characters in these works often refer to the Soviet Union as "Russia". * Sorb, a massive empire in The War Between the Provinces series that is based on the Russian Empire. References }} * Category:Atlantis Category:Crosstime Traffic Russia Russia Category:Drang von Osten Russia Category:Gunpowder Empire Category:The Guns of the South Russia Category:The More it Changes Category:Occupation Duty Category:Russian Empire (Alternate Timeline) * Russia Russia Category:Supervolcano Russia Russia Category:A Different Flesh Category:German Empire (Alternate Timeline) Category:The House of Daniel Category:Joe Steele Category:Liberating Alaska Category:Slue-Foot Sue and the Witch in the Woods Category:Vilcabamba Category:Zigeuner